From: cort@ecn.purdue.edu (Cortland D. Starrett)
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 94 10:58:49 PDT
To: fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham)
Subject: Re: What the heck is this? Optical noise encryption?
In-Reply-To: <9404201756.AA07286@smds.com>
Message-ID: <FAgjjWDCuKn8062yn@ecn.purdue.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> While dousing yet another "chaos encryption" rumor, Perry says-
> 
> > All this "encryption with chaos" stuff just adds up to "look at my
> > fancy PRNG"...
> 
> I think that's a very clear handle on chaos for people who know about
> PRNGs, or vice-versa.  Chaos = PRNG.  I wonder if there's any good
> cross-fertilization of the two fields beyond the obvious.

I am especially interested in the "strange attractors" aspect of chaos
theory.  A good article on strange attractors appeared in Scientific
American in the early/mid '80s.  (Mail/post me if you want me to look up
the issue.)  Douglas Hofstadter was the author (of Godel, Escher, Bach...
an awesome book!).

Strange attractors use feedback to "lock in".  I have used strange
attractors to find special points in n-dimensional spaces.

It may be far-fetched, but strange attractors or some similar
statistical/experimental method may be the means by which large
numbers are factored some day....

Cort.